IPv6 Historic Timeline
(Return to Home Page)This table of milestones in IPv6 history, international and Australian, was collated by Michael Biber and Kate Lance. If you know of relevant additions or amendments, please email the dates, events and references to mbiber(at)ipv6forum.org.au or phone +61 412 058 808. Australian milestones are marked in blue.
| Date | Event | Reference |
| 2015 Sep 24 | The North American address registry, ARIN, allocated its last free blocks of IPv4 addresses. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion |
| 2014 Jun 10 | The Latin American address registry, LACNIC, allocated its last free blocks of IPv4 addresses. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion |
| 2012 Sep 14 | The European address registry, RIPE-NCC, allocated its last free blocks of IPv4 addresses. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion |
| 2012 Jun 06 | World IPv6 Launch | http://www.worldipv6launch.org/ |
| 2011 Jun 08 | World IPv6 Day | http://www.ipv6.org.au/2011index.php |
| 2011 Apr 14 | The Australia Pacific address registry, APNIC, allocated its last free blocks of IPv4 addresses. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion |
| 2011 Feb | The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, IANA, reached the last of its remaining free blocks of IPv4 addresses. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion |
| 2008 Aug 08 | 2008 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games first major world events on IPv6, http://ipv6.beijing2008.cn/en | |
| 2008 Jul 19 | Internode launches native IPv6 transit via direct Ethernet and 6in4 tunnelled service | http://ipv6.internode.on.net/ |
| 2008 Jun 30 | US OMB Mandate for all US Government Systems to be IPv6 capable by 2008 achieved | |
| 2008 Jun 18 | IPv6Now web hosting services become available on dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 servers | http://www.ipv6now.com.au/about.php |
| 2008 May 28 | European Commission announced initiative for 25% users to adopt IPv6 by 2010 | http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/unlimited-source-internet-addresses-be-stream-europe-2010 |
| 2008 Apr 30 | IPv6Now launches first Australian commercial IPv6 Tunnel Service with SLAs | http://www.ipv6now.com.au/about.php |
| 2008 Mar 12 | Google launches an IPv6 web interface to its search engine at the URL http://ipv6.google.com | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6 |
| 2008 Feb 04 | IANA add the AAAA records for IPv6 addresses to the four root servers. Now possible for two internet hosts to communicate without IPv4 DNS | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6 |
| 2007 Oct 24 | Japan Emergency Earthquake Alert Service launched, based on IPv6 | http://www.ntt.com/release/2007NEWS/0010/1023.html |
| 2007 May 15 | ARIN tables policy of IPv6 addresses for large contiguous blocks. Discontinue IPv4 allocations for this purpose | http://www.arin.net/announcements/2007/20070521.html |
| 2006 Oct 12 | AARNet3 IPv6 deployed | |
| 2006 Aug | ipv6.org.au receives first AAAA record in the .au registry database, becomes first Australian IPv6 website (IPv6 for e-Business and Australian IPv6 Summit) | http://www.ipv6.org.au |
| 2006 Jun 06 | 6BONE decommissioned 06.06.06 | http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/03mar/minutes/6bone.htm |
| 2006 | Node requirements (RFC 4294) published | http://www.ipv6.com/articles/general/timeline-of-ipv6.htm |
| 2006 | Address architecture (RFC 4291) stable, minor revision | http://www.ipv6.com/articles/general/timeline-of-ipv6.htm |
| 2005 Nov | Australian DoD announce IPv6 implementation timeframe, out to 2013 | http://www.ipv6.org.au/05ipv6summit/Slides/DRichardsIPv6.ppt |
| 2005 Nov 05 | The first Australian IPv6 Summit held in Canberra, now an annual event | http://www.ipv6.org.au/allsummits/ |
| 2005 Apr 11 | Internet Society of Australia created IPv6 Special Interest Group | |
| 2004 | Flow label specifications (RFC 3697) added | http://www.ipv6.com/articles/general/timeline-of-ipv6.htm |
| 2004 | Mobile IPv6 (RFC 3775) published | http://www.ipv6.com/articles/general/timeline-of-ipv6.htm |
| 2003 Sep 09 | iBIT Technologies Inc applies for first IPv6Ready Logo certification | http://www.ipv6ready.org/ |
| 2003 Jul | ICANN IPv6 AAAA records for the Japan (.jp) and Korea (.kr) country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) nameservers became visible in the DNS root server zone files, followed by France (.fr) | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6 |
| 2003 Jun 09 | US DoD table IPv6 adoption strategy - target 2008 | |
| 2003 | DHCPv6 (RFC 3315) published | http://www.ipv6.com/articles/general/timeline-of-ipv6.htm |
| 2003 | Basic socket API (RFC 2553) published | http://www.ipv6.com/articles/general/timeline-of-ipv6.htm |
| 2003 | Apple Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther" has IPv6 support | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6 |
| 2002 Sep 18 | NTT/Davnet IPv6 trial launch in Australia | http://www.cuba.ipv6tf.org/pdf/biber_michael.pdf |
| 2001 Oct | Windows XP SP1 and Windows Server 2003 have IPv6 stack | http://research.microsoft.com/msripv6/ |
| 2001 | Connect.com.au registered as Top-Level Aggregation Registry, begins allocating IPv6 addresses | |
| 2001 Apr 21 | NTT/Verio launch global IPv6 service | http://www.ntt.com/release_e/news01/0004/0427.html |
| 2001 May 15 | Cisco releases commercial IPv6 support | |
| 2001 Feb 05 | IPv6 Forum Australia established | Initial domain name registration - Melbourne IT |
| 2000 Nov 17 | Uecomm deploys IPv6 with Ericsson core. First Australian NATIVE offering (removed sometime later) | http://www.cuba.ipv6tf.org/pdf/biber_michael.pdf |
| 2000 feb | Sun Solaris has IPv6 support from Solaris 8 | |
| 1999 Dec | NTT Implements IPv6 in Japan | http://www.ntt.com/release_e/news99/9911/1116.html |
| 1999 Oct 01 | Connect.com.au allocated official IPv6 address space from AUNIC | |
| 1999 Sep 01 | Japan starts allocation of IPv6 Addresses | NTT Com first TLA in Japan |
| 1999 Jul 15 | IANA allocates first IPv6 ranges to Regional Internet Registries | |
| 1999 Jul 1 | IPv6 Forum formed with 45 members | |
| 1999 Jun 25 | Trumpet Software International introduces IPv6 to users in Australia (via 6BONE). First Australian ISP with TUNNELED offering | http://www.trumpet.com.au/ |
| 1998 | Basic IPv6 protocol (RFC 2460) published | http://www.ietf.org |
| 1997 | IBM's AIX 4.3 was the first commercial platform to support IPv6 | http://dict.regex.info/ipv6/6bone/6bone.mail-1998-01/0024.html |
| 1996 | Peter Tatum Trumpet Software joins 6BONE | http://www.cuba.ipv6tf.org/pdf/biber_michael.pdf |
| 1996 Mar | 6BONE created | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6bone |
| 1996 | Linux gains alpha quality support for IPv6 (Kernel 2.1.8) | http://www.linux-ipv6.org/stable-6-ann.html |
| 1995 Dec | First IPv6 RFC 1883 (and others), promulgated by the IETF, IPv6 born from IPng and SIPP. Now RFC 2460 et al | |
| 1993 Dec | RFC 1550 issued calling for IPng proposals and establishing selection criteria. | |
| 1992 Mar | IETF calls for proposal for next generation IP. Rejects calls from IAB to adopt ISO CLNP |